A woman cries over the shrouded bodies of three children who were killed in an earthquake at the village of Chah Ghanbar, in the Kerman province, southeastern Iran, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck southeastern Iran late Monday, killing less than a dozen people and injuring more than 30, Iranian state TV reported.

The magnitude 6.5 quake late Monday struck 30 villages populated by no more than 4,000 people, state radio reported. Rescue efforts and damage assessments were being hampered by downed phone lines and landslides that have blocked access to some villages, official media cited officials as saying.

"The area was mountainous, and many roads have been blocked," Mohammad Barzang, a local official, told state radio. "From early morning we have sent loaders and bulldozers to open the roads."

Almost exactly seven years ago in the same region, a 6.6 earthquake struck the nearby city of Bam, killing more than 25,000 people and destroying a medieval castle that was one of Iran's most treasured archaeological sites.

Monday's 10:12 p.m. quake appears to have centered on the village of Hosseinabad, between the townships of Fahraj and Rigan, both less than 40 miles east of Bam in Kerman province, a vast region of high deserts and mountains.

Authorities in the provincial capital, also called Kerman, convened an emergency meeting to oversee rescue operations.

The Red Crescent, the local equivalent of the Red Cross, set up tents to shelter those whose homes were destroyed or left too unstable to live in. The Red Crescent of neighboring Turkey dispatched truckloads of blankets, tents and stoves to aid in the relief effort, the semi-official Turkish Anatolia news agency reported.

Iran is one of the world's most seismically active countries, crisscrossed by several major fault lines and hit nearly every day by earthquakes.

Iranian villagers continue to build mud-brick homes that collapse and smother them during earthquakes. State television reported that some residents in Monday's earthquake zone remained pinned in their homes.

In another development, a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 struck in the Pacific Ocean early today, triggering a brief tsunami warning off the southern coast of Japan, according to the Associated Press.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said the quake occurred about 80 miles off the southern coast of Chichi Island in the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese agency issued a tsunami alert of up to 6 feet for nearby islands.